Exchange Best Practices and Optimisation

I am implementing a new Exchange server as my current hardware is just too slow. I have a Dell 2950 with x6 146 HDDs in a RAID 0+1 with one large volume. The box is x1 dual core proc with 4GB RAM running Windows 2003 RS Std. I have partitioned this volume into 2 drives a 2GB C: drive where I have installed Windows and the Exchange program files, and a large D: where I have installed the Exchange edb's stm's and logs.

My question is, can someone let me know the best practices for the most optimised box. I have about 300 mailboxes averaging 1GB each that I need to migrate to this server. I am not sure about some of the deeper Exchange settings, how to best set the page files, how many storage groups to have, etc etc. Advice from Exchange guru's will be very much appreciated.

I would go for 10 GB system drive. Because OS and Exchange will occupy atleast 2 GB of space.
You need to provide more room for temp files that will be created later sometimes and also for the page file. Page file should be 150% of your physical RAM.

You should have another 2 logical drives - One for Transaction logs and other for databases.
TLog drive depends on your daily average email transaction and the backup strategy. Since this server is going to be your mailbox server, I don't recommend Circular logging.

For better performance, databases should be on adifferent drive als together.

Right, thank you, thats very helpful. Annoyingly, we have already create this large RAID 0+1 volume and partitioned it in Windows. And - we installed Exchange! So - how much better would the performance be with your setup do you think? I ask because we will miss our deadline if we do it that way.

1. If you have lesser capacity system drive, it be a big problem one or the other day.
2. If you have both TLogs and Databases on the same drive (logical & physical), read and write will be slow which will inturn affect user access.
3. Here you have all the partitions on the same RAID which has to server for OS request, Exchange request and user mailbox access request as well.

We have 3000 Mailboxes on a clustered exchange server with 4 Storage Group with 12 Stores - with the similar kind of setup in my previous post. We have additional drive which is completely free for future use or maintenance purposes.

If you can spend more for hardware, go for a Dell PowerVault storage (DAS).
If you are looking for cost effective solution, then you may follow the below setup:
1. Create RAID 1 with 2*136 GB HDDs - Make a partition of 30 GB for system drive (C:) and rest for
TLogs (L:).
2. Create RAID 5 with 4*136 GB HDDs - use it for Databases. Here you will get only 410 GB usable
space, but the Disk I/O will be effective for better performance for exchange database.

NOTE: I would suggest to go for more capacity HDDs or for a Power Vault Storage.

Since you bought a new Dell server, you can call Dell support also for suggestions.

Thanks Veera - I think I will add the DAS later when we get full and use it for additional database drives. Does that sounds like a good plan considering we are on a budget? Also, is there a chance that the logs drive would be too small on a 136GB OS partition? Also, do you always recommend RAID1 for logs and RAID5 for DBs?

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